Te Wiki o te Reo Māori

[Ainsley Lynch]

Kia ora e hoa mā! (Hello, my friends!) It's Te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori language week) over here in Aotearoa (New Zealand), and I thought this would be a fun excuse to share some kupu (words) and whakahua (pronunciation) for anyone who'd like to incorporate te reo Māori (Māori language) into their RP! (Or impress your friends IRL with your mean as (cool) new language skills!) (That one's not te reo, just a fun bit of kiwi slang )

Te reo Māori is spoken more and more widely in Aotearoa by people of all ethnicities as we move towards becoming a fully bilingual country, and all of the examples given below are common knowledge words you'll see in everyday speech all over the country, so it's totally appropriate and accurate to include them in RP any time you like!

Kia ora - Hello/thank you (casual)
(eg; Kia ora, Ainsley!/Oh, kia ora for the present you sent for Christmas!)
Tēnā koe/kōrua/koutou- Hello/thank you (formal) (The suffix indicates how many people you're talking to. Koe means one person, kōrua means two people, and koutou means three or more people.)
(Eg; Tēnā koutou, students!/Tēnā koe Professor for making me Head Boy!)
Haere mai - Welcome
(eg; Haere mai to the first Wild Patch meeting of the year!)
Ka pai - Good/well done
(eg; Ka pai on catching the snitch!)
Kia kaha - Stay strong/keep going
(eg; Kia kaha to everyone studying for their NEWTs!)
Kai - Food
(eg; I'm starving, I hope there's still kai in the Great Hall!)
Mahi - Work
(eg; I hope you all put in plenty of mahi on last week's essay!)
Tautoko - Support
(eg; I made a big banner so we can tautoko Gryffindor in tomorrow's match!)
Aroha - Love
(eg; I'm sending a red rose for aroha this Valentines!)
Kōrero - Talk/conversation/speech
(eg; We need to kōrero about why you had detention last week./Wands away class, today I'm going to give a kōrero about the difference between a hex and a jinx.)
Ka kite anō au i a koe/kōrua/koutou - See you later (Usually shortened to ka kite or ka kite anō in casual speech) (Suffixes are the same as for tēnā depending on how many people you're talking to)
(eg; That was a great practice, ka kite!)

If you want to look up more kupu, Te Aka Māori Dictionary is a fantastic resource, and comes with pronunciation guides! Speaking of whakahua, here's a cool starter guide for how each letter and digraph is pronounced. (Wh may surprise you!) The youtube channel Ako Māori has great pronunciation guides and beginner kupu too!

You also may have noticed a lot of words are spelled with tohutō (macrons) - this is pretty important, as often two words pronounced slightly differently will have very different meanings. For example, kākā is a kind of bird, kakā means spicy, and kaka means clothing. It can go really wrong in some circumstances - tāra means dollar, but if you spell it without the tohutō, you get a word I definitely can't say on HNZ. If you find yourself in a position where you can't type a tohutō for some reason (account usernames for example) the rule is to double the vowel to show the difference in pronunciation. (For example, my character Rāwhiti Te Rangi has Raawhiti in his username instead.)

There's so much exciting stuff happening in the reo revival movement over here, this post is already getting way too long but there are original placenames being brought back into common use, mainstream kiriata (movies) and pukapuka (books) being translated into te reo Māori, and more and more tīwī (TV) is being presented bilingually. There's some pretty amazing puoro (music) being produced in te reo Māori these days too, if metal's your speed I'd recommend Alien Weaponry, if you prefer things more chill Maisey Rika may be up your alley, or if pop's your style Maimoa have some real bops.

Te reo Māori was almost wiped out entirely by European colonialism, and it's amazing seeing a taonga (treasure - though this word has a lot of cultural and legal significance that doesn't translate into English, the link provides a lot more context) being brought back to life. Turanga Edmonds put it best, I think -

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I'm still learning myself, so I'd love it if anyone else has any favourite kupu or waiata (songs) or other resources they want to share, let's kōrero and tautoko each other's reo learning journeys! Aroha to everyone and happy wiki o te reo Māori!

Kia kaha te reo Māori!

 

[Professor Adorah Zumwalt]

Wow, this is such wonderful information, and I definitely want to look more into some of the links you attached. Thank you for sharing, Rowan!

 

[Lucy Montague]

Tino pai tō mahi! I'm just nearing the end of my first year taking a te reo class so I'm at the beginning of my reo journey but it's been great so far. Really exciting to see new ways te reo Māori has been incorporated into everyday situations. Here in Tāmaki Makaurau, our buses now announce the next bus stop in Māori (and then in English) with a recording, for example, and that's been cool. I'll definitely have to check out some of those resources! After class ends I'll need a way to keep up my reo while I wait for it to start up again next year.

Kia kaha te reo Māori!

 

[Nicolas King]

Somehow I missed this when you posted it, Rowan - thanks for sharing! I'm sure seeing some of these more often in RPs will help set HNZ more realistically in... NZ!

Also sorry about usernames not accepting special characters. Our forum software could allow it, but it's disabled because our site systems don't handle them well and I'm not a good enough programmer to fix that. I'm glad there's a system in place for getting the correct pronunciation!

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

Also sorry about usernames not accepting special characters. Our forum software could allow it, but it's disabled because our site systems don't handle them well and I'm not a good enough programmer to fix that. I'm glad there's a system in place for getting the correct pronunciation!

Aw no I knew this was the case, it's just a reality of how tech is sometimes. (My dad teaches comp sci so I've heard horror stories...) The doubling of vowels has been built in for a long time to get around this issue. (It's also a regional thing to a degree - in the Waikato dialect they use double vowels entirely instead of tohutō. There are also some words like ātaahua (beautiful) with BOTH, so... language is complex haha)

 

[Aine Thompson]

I tend to zone out to cooking shows and I've been catching one where the host will give some directions in te reo, which is really interesting. It's really heartening to see more use of it and a motivation to keep it alive. (There's a line in a Gang of Youths song where the singer mentions he wished he'd learned it to be closer to his father's family...). I feel like I should definitely make more of a conscious effort to use it with my kiwi characters so I'll definitely use these resources, thanks Rowan!

There's a tiny bit of movement to using more indigenous place names here, at least, but it's very slow going. I think a lot of language groups here have been wiped out, so there is some general public desire not to lose all of them, but Australia is how it is. It's a shame that it's taken this long to preserve language and cultures, but better late than never.

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

I tend to zone out to cooking shows and I've been catching one where the host will give some directions in te reo, which is really interesting.

YEEEEAH, this is a thing more and more in TV here, both languages will be used interchangeably at times and it's both cool to see and super useful for just picking up vocab in the wild. It reflects a lot of how people talk IRL too, I'll ask my friends how their tamariki (kids) are doing, or invite people over to my whare (house) without thinking twice about it. Our language revival movement has been going since the 70s, but the last 5 years or so has REALLY picked up steam, it's great

 

[Pierre Bonnet]

Oh! I never saw this! I'll have to incorporate it more for my kiwi characters as well, thanks Rowan!

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

Kia ora! Ko te wiki o te reo Māori anō! The theme this year is "Ake ake ake, a forever language!" This past year te reo Māori (and te ao Māori in general) has been under attack by our right wing government, so I think it's more important than ever to celebrate & uplift Māori culture and language!

I thought a fun way to engage on HNZ this year would be to share some waiata reo Māori so everyone can enjoy some tunes & get to know what the language feels and sounds like, (and hopefully score some music recs myself if anyone else has anything to share ) I listen to a lot of music in te reo Māori, so it was a bit hard to pare this post down lmao but I have so many more recs if anyone wants them. There's a ton of amazing music being made these days, in just about any genre you could ask for! This is just a small selection of a mixture of icons and personal favourites.

Speaking of icons, I'd be remiss not to start with Poi E. It's a national treasure for a reason - the only kiwi song ever to top the charts in three separate decades. You won't meet a single kiwi who doesn't know this song. Patea Māori Club released an album in the 80s that featured a blend of modern hip hop elements and traditional singing styles, to try and get youth more interested in traditional music. To say it worked is an understatement.

Maisey Rika is one of my own favourite singers, her voice is stunning, and never fails to put me in a peaceful place. Here's a duet she did with Kahurangi's PB, Anika Moa!

If peaceful isn't your style, Alien Weaponry might be! They're a metal band who blew up while they were still in high school and they've become an absolute staple of the music scene.

Welp I just typed up a whole post, then discovered HNZ doesn't allow more than 3 videos per post, so hold for part 2!

 

[Ainsley Lynch]

There's plenty of pop music out there too - a couple years ago an album came out called Waiata that's a collection of re-recorded pop songs by the original artists. (I think there's another one in the works?) Lorde also recorded a selection of songs off Solar Power in te reo, but here's a personal favourite off Waiata;

Lastly, here's a piece written for Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori 10 years ago that still brings a tear to my eye. It features so many top tier local musicians, and the video is such a beautiful showcase of what makes this country special.

Anyone else have any music recs? I could go on forever, but I'm always looking to build my library!

On an unrelated personal note, I just got around to something I've meant to do forever - recording pronunciation guides for my Māori characters' names. I know it probably doesn't come intuitively to non-kiwis, so I wanted to provide an easy resource so nobody's confused. (Rāwhiti's name especially won't be intuitive!) Here's a drive with all the guides! My pronunciation isn't perfect, but this should point you in the right direction.